Angel vs Devil
by TheVirtuoso
Summary: Crowley was just trying to get to Tadfield to stop the End of Days and maybe kill a kid. What did this Angel fellow have against him? What did he ever do to deserve this...


Playing with timelines here: in this story Hot Fuzz takes place post Good Omens and Good Omens takes place 'in the 21st century'. In addition to that I really wanted this to _naturally_ take place in the UK but all the cop shows I know take place in the US/Canada or star David Tennant and I didn't want that particular headache. I grabbed the first one I could think of and that was 'That DI from Hot Fuzz' after which I had to figure out his name and its Angel. Also he's not a DI in canon but a PC/PS. Woops.

First thing: Crowley had nothing to do with the fire.

He also had nothing to do with the explosion but that was neither here nor there. It was the fire that the Detective Inspector was bothering him about.

It all started sometime after Aziraphale died but also after Crowley ran into him in that nice pub with the truly terrible whisky which must mean Aziraphale was only discorperated. It still hurt but was less terrible that way. Crowley had sobered up – a bit – in preparation to drive to Tadfeild when a pair of cops stopped him and threatened to breathalyze him if he didn't 'go with us to the yard for a friendly chat.'

"What's your name sir?" DI Nicolas Angel asked him. The irony of his name was not lost on the tempter.

"What's it to you?" Crowley asked.

"We need to know your name for the record of this interview. What is your name sir?"

"Crowley."

"First name?"

"What do you need that for?" Crowley asked indignant. What he wouldn't give to have all the comfort and convenience of the twenty-first century with a much older approach to names. He didn't get the sudden instance on two names. When DI Angel made no indication that he would reconsider his question. Crowley sighed, "Antony. Antony Crowley, if you must know.

"What is all this about, _Angel_?" He tried hard to make the name sound like an insult but he said it too often in earnest to really make it sound like anything other than an awkward flirtation. He closed his eyes in embarrassment behind his dark shades. To Crowley's immense pleasure, DI Angel flushed and cleared his throat.

"You were seen leaving the scene of a fire in Soho earlier today." DI Angel stated as he consulted his notes. "Its not the first time you show up in area CCTV." Crowley nodded. It made sense. He was always in and out of Aziraphale's shop these days. Warlock might not have been the antichrist but he was enough of a handful to keep his 'godfathers' drinking together on their days off. Keeping out of heaven and hell's eyes was far easier than avoiding the human's CCTV. "Whereupon you took off your sunglasses, told a firefighter that you 'should litter' because, and this is a quote, you 'are a demon after all'. Would you care you explain that statement at all?"

DI Angel let the quiet hang for a moment.

"Look its just – well – uh." Crowley sputtered. He hated when his tongue got in the way and he couldn't make it do words correctly. It happened from time to time.

"Moving on." DI Angel consulted his notes again, "According to our records you are a bit of nuance prankster Mr. Crowley. Letting air out of tires and knocking over sandwich boards all over London."

"And what, that's illegal now is it?"

"It has always been illegal."

"Wasn't in the fourteenth century." Crowley couldn't believe he was siding with the bloody fourteenth century.

"No I don't suppose it was. However, it should have been and it is now."

"You're a bit peculiar aren't you?" Crowley was a little bit amazed that the human before him would zealously defend laws against knocking over sandwich boards. He was also a little bit amazed at how effective that was at causing low-grade evil. The proprietors got annoyed about having to stand them back up and the passers-by became the... whatever the opposite of a Good Samaritan was by not stopping to help.

"Not as peculiar as you are, Mr. Crowley. Did you know that not a single CCTV camera has a shot of you without your glasses on? That's a bit unusual, especially today as you did litter by dropping your twisted, melted sunglasses on the ground outside of A. Z. Fell's used bookstore and yet here you are in an identical, whole, not melted pair."

"What can I say, detective inspector, I like this look so I have a few spares." As if Crowley was going to tell this man about the piles of glasses in his glove compartment or the draws in his kitchen dedicated to various styles.

"And why you always wear them?"

"light sensitivity."

"Had it your whole life?"

"Most of it, yeah." Crowley muttered, "light didn't bother me when I was hanging up the stars and nebula."

"What was that?"

"Nothing, DI Angel. I developed the light sensitivity before you were a spark in your Mother's eye." Crowley's eyebrows raised in challenge. He knew he didn't look like a particularly young man. Somewhere in his late forties on a good day – early fifties on a bad one. DI Angel, by comparison, was maybe in his thirties.

"What do my eyes have anything to do with whatever this is?" He gestured with his hand to take in the entirety of the so-called interview room. It wasn't an interrogation chamber or whatever. It didn't have windows and there wasn't even really a big imposing table just a small spindly one with DI Angel's notes spread across them.

"Nothing sir, a disability is hardly suspicious." Angel said softly. Crowley frowned. He wasn't _disabled_ in the human sense. He was just of the opinion that explaining his yellow eyes was too much bother and, as he was a bit nocturnal, the light really did bother him. Still if it got the DI off his back, he'd take it. Some of his favourite humans were disabled after all.

"No, Mr. Crowley, my concern, the service's concern is that you graduated from nuisance pranks and into arson." DI Angel stared at the demon who was sputtering again.

"Arson? Arson? Is that what – how could you? I – Of all the ridiculous" Crowley leaned back as far away from the DI as he could get without leaving his seat, "I've never been so insulted."

Its one thing to glue 50p coins to the pavement or turn up the temperate of the deep freeze during the summer – just enough so that your ice cream melts too fast. Its an entirely other thing to burn a shop down.

"Jesus – Lucif – Whoever. Even if I would do something as pointless as burn down a bookshop I certainly wouldn't choose that one. Zira would likely kill me. Then yell at me."

"You know the proprietor?"

"What?" Crowley realized belatedly that he did, in fact, admit to knowing the angel. One minute in a room with a human trained to ask things and he was giving away 6000 year old secrets. "Yes I know the _proprietor_. We've known each other for a very long time."

"let me guess: you've known each other since before I was a twinkle in my father's eye."

"Well that too." Crowley allowed with a nod.

"Perhaps you and Mr. Fell had a disagreement." DI Angel suggested.

"Well as it happens we did. But I was going to the shop to sort everything out when it caught fire. The only thing I was able to save was one of his books of prophecy. He had quite the collection you know?

"Anyway Zira asked me to take it to a woman in Tadfield. She rides a bike without gears. I haven't seen bikes without gears in years. Not ridden by adults at least. I used to have a bike with no gears. It was really tall too. I think the historians are calling them Giraffe Bicycles these days. It was a lovely great beast. Not as good at my Bentley that is certain but a pretty good second. Well.. better than a horse in any event.

"Oh, I seem to have lost the thread there." Crowley blinked, "What were you asking about?"

"Well." DI Angel began as he gathered his own thoughts.

"Oh that's right! Could I have lit the shop ablaze. I suppose I could have but who would willingly get A. Zira Fell angry at them? I am fundamentally a coward and would like my spleen where it is thank you all the same.

"No, no. I was just to take the book to Tadfield where Zira is hoping to meet up with me. Then we are off to see our godson and hopefully not the end of the world.

"Speaking of which." Crowley glanced down at his watch. It was an obnoxiously expensive piece but it certainly kept excellent time, "I really must be off. I'm sorry but it takes three hours to get to Tadfield from London on a good day." This was anything but a good day. "If there is still an issue in, oh, five hours or so, call me and I'll come back to continue this whole," he gestured to the room again, "charade.'

Before the DI could trick him into talking anymore Crowley levered himself up out of the seat and rushed, as much as his unstable legs would let him, out the door and down the hall. His Bentley was waiting for him slightly to the right of the entrance. It wasn't where Crowley parked the car but it was where he expected to find it. So find it he did.

Detective Inspector Nicholas Angel sputtered and followed the demon outside. He got there just in time to see the Bentley peel away from the curb into traffic. He wrote in his pad 'reckless driving' before heading back inside to pursue other avenues. He didn't have enough time to chase Antony Crowley. Instead he set up an internet search for mentions of the strange red-head and started on the paper records on A Zira Fell's shop.

He was slightly surprised to discover that the A in A Zira Fell stood for 'Antony'.

As Crowley made his way out of the station he murmured to a few key individuals, "That Angel fellow is a bit keen, isn't he?" when his targets nodded he planted directly into their minds '_he's making us look bad_'. He was a demon after all. Just because he tended to go for wide sweeping annoyances didn't mean he couldn't use the finesse and art of more traditional temptations.

Fin.

For anyone wondering why Crowley is rambling on like that: I have been spending time transcribing oral history interviews recently. Admittedly, an oral history interview is very different from an interrogation but the theory is the same: begin with easy questions, lead into hard, open ended questions, and end with easy questions. Crowley ran out before the ending but got to the second step easily enough.

I know a lot of people laugh at the Antony Jantony Crowley name but I'm a big fan of the theory that A(ntony) Zira Fell goes by Zira because his bestfriend/life partner/qpp already goes by Antony in public at least./span/p


End file.
